The Once-Over

So it had been raining, and I wanted to make sure that the boat wasn't filling up with water while it sat there. I went down to the marina and had a look around. There was a tiny bit of water in the bottom of the boat, but nothing to worry about. Since it was actually sunny while I was there, I decided to look the boat over a bit while I was there, as last time, when I decided to get it, I hadn't really done a very careful job.

The interior wasn't as bad as I remembered it. I thought it was totally stripped bare and just white fiberglass. It largely is like that, but mostly that's because it was a pretty spartan interior in the first place. Except for the hack-job of an electrical panel, it's mostly just missing cushions and filled with a bunch of junk.

I also thought I'd see how much of the brown-ness of the hull was baked in, and how much of it was just dust on top of the gelcoat. Someone had conveiniently left a plastic scrub brush in the cabin, so I just dipped that in the water, picked a part of the boat, and gave it a 3-minute scrub. I mean, it's still far from perfect, but you can definitely see a difference where I've just spent a couple minutes on it.

The worst parts on the boat are the areas around the winch islands. The gelcoat is badly cracked, and the underlying fiberglass is even exposed a bit in spots. I'll have to sand this smooth, fill it in, and paint over it.

Still, for a free boat, you could definitely do a lot worse. Use this pic to compare later when I've got some more work done. (Can you see where I did a bit of scrubbing on the bow, too?)

There were plenty of other problems too, but I don't need to detail them all right now. Each one will get before and after pictures once I get around to working on it. First things first - I've got to get the boat registered so that I can prove it actually belongs to me, then I've got to pull it out of the water and make sure the hull is sound, and get it painted.

Tyler Karaszewski

The Once-Over

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